Neverball on the N900

It wasn’t long ago I had a little play around with Neverputt, a minigolf game recently ported to the N900. There I mentioned that Neverputt has roots in Neverball, a very similar game with a slightly different concept. It is of course good to know that I didn’t find Neverball for Nokia N900 nearly quite as frustrating as Neverputt.

Neverball has a fairly identical world to Neverputt, making sense since Neverputt is derived from Neverball. The physics work the same, and the levels all appear the same. The difference is that while Neverputt you control the ball with a golf club while selecting angles and power, in Neverball you control the ball by moving the floor, and that is done by moving the N900 itself.

The basic idea of the game is to simply navigate a course, collect a sufficient amount of coins, then reach the target within the time allotted. The more coins you collect, and the faster you complete the stage, the more points you receive. Simple but effective. Perhaps it’s my lack of gaming skill coming into it again, but I did find controlling the ball very difficult to begin with, and moving the N900 all around conflicted with my CSSU portrait support. After a while of playing around though, I did seem to get the hang of controlling Wilson somewhat as the difficulty increased, and I found that having the keyboard out while playing eliminated the games desire to try play in portrait.

Frame rates were fine, with out too many slowdowns, nothing game breaking. Once again trying to change graphic options only causes the game to crash, much like Neverputt. One of the awesome options here though is the ability to change the ball, away from a boring monochromatic beach toy, to things like the atom, Saturn, or even Blinky the pac man ghost. Bouncing around the levels with Blinky made any fun had just that much better; perhaps it’s the emotionless state it gives me that makes it feel like I’m looking into a mirror.

Neverball may actually find some love with me whenever I need to kill some time in the future, as it doesn’t take long to thump out a few levels, and has the addictive qualities of Angry Birds, just not quite as bad that you will abandon all your friends. If you do give it a try though, do be sure to stick at it for a few levels, instead of throwing your N900 at the wall… ooopss.